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She believed women weren't stupid or weak naturally. They only seem that way because men won't let them have a proper education. Her stating this was a huge deal because it was one of the first times someone clearly argued that women deserve equality, not just as wives or mothers, but as human beings who can think for themselves. -
It was the first law that formally and explicitly barred women from voting in parliamentary elections by defining voters as "male persons."This made the legal barrier that pushed the next 80 years of the fight for women's voting rights, giving activists a clear legal wrong to fight against. -
Mill argued that the legal and social control of women was wrong and based only on outdated force. As a respected male public figure, John Stuart Mill provided the growing women's rights movement with a powerful intellectual and philosophical foundation for demanding equality. -
The law allowed married women to legally keep and control the wages and earnings they made from their own work. Before this, all her income automatically belonged to her husband. It gave married women financial independence for the first time and began to break down the old legal rule that erased a woman's legal identity upon marriage.